Community-led Open Innovation Call 2

Open Innovation Calls are an opportunity to test out new ideas, prototypes, and services, with support from +CityxChange partners. Ideas are tested in real life settings for a set period of time - up to 12 months - and we welcome interest from citizens, makers, creatives, start-ups, businesses, and other stakeholders.

Greening the Smart Grid

Greening the Smart Grid

Our project aims to energise the citizenry of Limerick City to become actively involved in the energy transition growing food in an EMS enabled microgrid. This project provides practical pathways for ordinary citizens, to become active participants in the energy transition. Raise awareness and educating, the population to enable everyone to engage in the decarbonisation of society and the economy. 

Our project involves a collaboration between three organisations The Urban Co-op, Community Power and Cleantech Renewable Energy Ltd. The Urban Co-op’s expertise in community co-operative food production & retailing, Community Power’s expertise in community co-operative energy and Clean Tech’s expertise in energy management systems, we combine to offer Limerick city residents an introduction to energy generation, usage, management and ownership. We will empower the citizenry with a sense of the transformative nature of the decarbonised renewable energy space.

We will enable Limerick citizens to reimagine the public realm in the city centre, as a positive energy district. Using renewable energy, smart technology, and horticulture, together with continuous workshops we will bring the citizens on a journey through the Greening of the Smart Grid. We aim to make the participants ambassadors for positive energy districts.

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Georgian Heat xChange

Georgian Heat xChange

Reuse waste heat from the café unit on the ground floor for use in the café and the apartments above.

The café unit on the ground floor generates significant heat from its kitchen; cooker, fryer, hob. Typically the temperature gets to 25-30 degrees at ceiling level. The café has extraction to get rid of this air which is constantly on when the café is open. The heat is created through cooking which costs money and the café spends more money to expel the hot air and it's literally throwing money away. What we are trying to achieve in this project is to show that this hot air can be reused as a heat source for the café as well as the apartments above.

The overall aim of this project is to reduce energy consumption in the café and in the apartments by capturing the kitchen heat which is the by-product of the cooking process. This will achieve two things, reduce the heat in the kitchen making it a more pleasant working environment and reduce the overall energy consumption of the building users.

The idea is to install a heat exchanger to capture the excess kitchen heat, use it to heat fresh air and transfer it to the café and apartments.

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Solar Carport

Solar Carport

Our project will see the installation of a solar charged carport which will generate clean, renewable energy from the sun. This energy can then be used to charge electric vehicles parked inside while any excess generation can be used elsewhere on site or sold back to the grid to generate income. We will specify, manufacture and install a suitably designed solar carport.

This product can be scaled up and down so that it can be used in a wide variety of different settings such as:

  • Workplaces - Offering EV charging for employees during business hours at their place of work
  • Schools / campuses / hospitals - Offering EV charging for students and staff members during class hours
  • Public Parking - Offering EV charging to people living and working in the locality Destination lands - Such as shopping malls and amusement parks 
  • Family homes - A single solar carport can be incorporated into residential homes to allow EV charging when parked overnight.

In reality any place where people go to spend leisure time and will usually leave their car parked for a number of hours.

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Mapping the Air Quality Microclimate

Mapping the Air Quality Microclimate

We will produce a detailed map of localised air quality levels in and around the Georgian Quarter. We will provide visibility of how air quality varies in areas of high chimney density and weather conditions to encourage people to make different, healthier, fuel choices.

The aim is to produce a number of pieces of monitoring equipment that can be mounted on vehicles (cars/commercial vehicles/bicycles). These will contain a particulate counter and a GPS module along with ancillary electronics. These will take frequent samples of the air, and report these along with the precise position and time. Having already conducted successful prototype work in County Clare we would like to produce a more rugged and reproducible package. Open designs will be published for others to reproduce.

There will be a web site developed to capture and analyse the data from the mobile monitors. This will be in the form of a map with tools to show the air quality at different points in time. There will be an open API for the data so that it can be further processed and used by other projects in the future.

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Petrol to PV: Decarbonising the Shannon river

Petrol to PV: Decarbonising the Shannon River

 

St. Michael's Rowing Club would like to install PV Panels on the roof along with some lithium ion batteries. The energy will be used for electrical consumption but also for charging batteries. These batteries will then be used in training launches on the River Shannon which will decarbonise and reduce petrol use.

40m2 of PV Panels will be installed on the roof. A launch with an electric battery package shall be purchased. This shall be charged at night and with excess solar PV from the roof generation. Excess PV shall be sold to the community through Community Power the energy supplier. This energy can then be purchased by other users in the locality. Energy usage within the building shall be monitored along with solar intensity through a Radiation Meter which shall be linked to the internet.

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Upcoming - Open Call #3

Details to be announced in mid-2021

There is also a series of Do-It-Together Workshops to be held in the Innovation Lab and online throughout the year. As well as upcoming events City Engage Week and the Positive Energy Champion Campaign for upcoming events.

Previous Calls

Take Control of Your Energy

Open Innovation Call #2, 2021


Solutions for Laneways and Citizen Sensing Supports

Community Led Open Innovation

Solutions for Positive Energy Transition and Limerick's Georgian Laneways

Open Innovation Call #1, 2020